oh absolutely, its been a progression though and search order rewriting was implemented very early on as part of ad integration. its common in search relevancy/tuning circles

your example with google isn't necessarily applicable now because they've shown a roadmap that can be done and squeezed down tightly between the "hey, we're good folks" to "you're our captive cattle, we can do whatever the fuck we want. there's nothing you can do, since all our competitors will be doing the exact same thing shortly"